


Just Can’t Dance Like Fred Astaire

by LinguisticJubilee



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Asexuality, Fred Astaire - Freeform, Gen, I have many feelings about this okay?, No spoilers for The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguisticJubilee/pseuds/LinguisticJubilee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve never wanted to dance.  Seventy years later, he found out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Can’t Dance Like Fred Astaire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [usernicole](https://archiveofourown.org/users/usernicole/gifts).



Steve just never got it, you know?  That constant chase, like women held something valuable deep inside themselves, and maybe if men got close enough, they’d be able to grasp it and finally be whole.  It was like they were possessed — hell, he’d seen Bucky act downright stupid just for a chance to woo a dame — so there must be some meaning to be found in pursuit of a woman.  The beat-up radio in his mom’s old place always played songs about love and the power it holds over a soul.  But Steve knows love, could taste it in every spoonful of soup his mom fed him on his bad days, could feel it in Bucky’s arm slung over his shoulder.  He felt his heart break in a quiet plot of land on the outskirts of Queens, so that’s gotta prove he had one to begin with, right?  But he’s never felt any great compulsion to find a gal, step out with her, marry her, have kids with her.  When he thought about the future (on the good days, when he thought he’d have a future) it was just kind of set — him, and Bucky, and Bucky’s gal.  He didn’t see anything wrong with that.

Maybe it was physical.  Hell, the rest of him grew in stunted, so maybe whatever made you want a dame did too?  Steve and his dick weren’t exactly strangers, but when it came to finding another person to share that with, he just wasn’t interested.  He thought that might change with the serum, but no luck.  Don’t get him wrong, it was nice to know he wouldn’t get winded in the middle of jerking off, but whatever the serum did, it didn’t create the stirrings in his belly he’s heard so much about.  

And then there was Peggy. God, but Peggy was amazing.  Sharp as a whip, a brilliant tactician, with a sense of humor that would sneak up on you if you weren’t prepared for it.  Peggy was fascinating; Steve just wanted to spend all his time around her, soaking her in.  Maybe that’s what Fred Astaire meant when he sang _“_ _Heaven, I’m in heaven,_ _”_ because for the first time, maybe Steve wouldn’t mind a dance so much.  But wasn’t there supposed to be more?  Wasn’t this supposed to trip over some switch in his head?  He’d found the perfect gal, so where were the dreams and the desires the movies promised him?  

It turned out, the answer didn’t really matter.  In his last, slow moments as the cold creeped into his skin, he couldn’t help but think:   _Well, if that’s all a kiss was, guess I didn’t miss much._

Steve woke up in a perfectly manicured room with a perfectly attractive woman, and whoever these people were, they really didn’t know him at all.  But reality was crueler than he could ever have imagined.  People say time passes in a blur, but the next few months were sharp, crisp in their foreignness.  Everything was different, and the serum wouldn’t let him forget any of it.  Part of his strategic instinct, he supposed, like how he picked up German and French so quickly on the front lines. He couldn’t turn it off, noticing all the differences in stepping out —  _dating_ , the differences in  _dating_ — women would approach him in now, stating openly what before they had to hide coyly.  Men would dance with men, and women with women.  It sent a pang in his chest, remembering friends in the army who spent their whole lives pretending, but it didn’t change his general disinterest in sex.   The lyrics may have been coarser, but Rihanna and Adele made about as much sense to him as Ginger Rogers did .   The more things change, etc.

Fred Astaire made sixteen more musicals between Steve’s death and his own.  Most of them were terrible.  Steve watched every one.

SHIELD began to prepare him briefing packets on the future.  Steve didn’t know who wrote them, but he felt for the poor guy — stuck in an office, trying to figure out what to teach a dinosaur without offending his frail sensibilities.  Among the carefully curated reports was one called “queer theory,” which rankled Steve but only until he figured out it was a kind of badge of pride, like a giant middle finger immortalized in academia.  Of course, the report was bullshit, because this nameless SHIELD historian used so many euphemisms and needless jargon in a clear effort to prevent Steve from blushing.  Steve, of course, rejected this, and turned instead to his new best friend, the Internet.

The Internet was like nothing he’d ever seen.  It’s messy and disorganized and there was some stuff he really wished he could have skipped, but here’s the thing:  it’s beautiful.  People get in fights with each other, yell at each other in all caps, but they write down the truth.  Their own subjective, personal, unadulterated truth.  And that’s where he saw it:   _asexual_.   He stopped, breath caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat.  His body thrummed with energy, just like when Ernstein stamped 1A on his draft card: like he was rapidly approaching a cliff edge and was only two steps away from flying.  There were so many new words to learn, nuances and variations and debates, but he didn’t want to dwell on what he didn’t know.  Some people wrote exclusively about their experience, like ace ambassadors shouting into the void.  Others used the label like a shield, to protect themselves from the world’s expectations so they could enjoy life’s other, deeper treasures.  Here, from a sleek screen in his Brooklyn apartment, Steve had access to another world.  A whole colony of people writing in big, beautiful letters across this digital skyline:   _We exist._

Steve leaned back in his chair, and it was like his body settled around his soul, a better fit than it ever was before.  He felt  comfortable , like he never had since the ice, since Erskine stuffed him into a machine three sizes too large.  Hell, perhaps it went deeper than that, because for the first time he can remember, since he was too small and too confused in the noisy corner of a dance hall — for the first time, Steve was home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Cheek to Cheek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLIMZ-gKyF0) sung by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in _Top Hat (1935)_.
> 
> Sexuality is messy, and as someone who doesn't identify as queer I realize that I may have made mistakes in this portrayal. If you want to talk to me about it, or have any concerns, feel free to comment here, or discuss it privately with me on [Tumblr ](http://linguisticjubilee.tumblr.com). 
> 
> This fic owes it existence entirely to [Nicole](http://wizzardblizzard.tumblr.com), who had the brilliant headcanon that Steve was ace to begin with.


End file.
